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| Title | Picturesque Palestine, Sinai, and Egypt, Vol. 2 |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Publisher | D. Appleton and Company |
| Date | 1883 |
| Description | Index: Phoenicia and Lebanon / by the Rev. H. W. Jessup -- The Phoenician plain / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- Acre, the key of Palestine, Mount Carmel and the river Kishon, Maritime cities and plains of Palestine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Lydda and Ramleh, Philistia / By Lt. Col. Warren -- The south country of Judaea / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- The southern borderland and Dead Sea / by Professor Palmer -- Mount Hor and the cliffs of Edom, The convent of St. Catherine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Sinai / by the Rev. C. P. Clarke -- The land of Goshen, Cairo, Memphis, Thebes, Edfu and Philae / by S. Lane-Poole. |
| Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Location | DS107 .W73 v.2 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b1703789~S11 |
| Digital Collection | Exotic Impressions: Views of Foreign Lands |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/exotic |
| Repository | Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room, William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://info.lib.uh.edu/about/campus-libraries-collections/william-r-jenkins-architecture-art-library |
| Use and Reproduction | No Copyright - United States |
| Identifier | exotic_201304_015 |
| Title | Page 430 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | exotic_201304_015_457.jpg |
| Transcript | 43o PLCTURESQUE PALESTLNE. nothing, have gone without a trace ? But besides this demolition and decay, where is Thebes itself, the city u of the hundred gates," of which Homer sang ?— oic oaa Gi'ifiag Alyfjurrlac, o9l TrXticrra SdfjLOiQ sv KTrffiara Ktlrai, aW tKarofjiTrvXoi ti<ri, CniKoatoi d1 av eKaarrju avkptQ i^oi\vhv(Ji ovv 'LirirQiaiv Kai bxtvtyw.—Il ix. 381—384. Here are some of its temples, whose pylons doubtless formed the " hundred gates,'' but the city itself seems to have been swallowed up by the earth. Of all this great metropolis, which once could send out twenty thousand armed chariots, and whose Kryjfxara furnished indeed a mighty spoil to the Persian Cambyses, of the capital of the victorious Amenoph, Thothmes, and Rameses, absolutely nothing remains—not a trace of a wall—hardly even a mound of rubbish ! Like Memphis, Thebes itself has vanished utterly from the face of the earth. Like Memphis, also, Thebes has left behind monuments of its religion which three and four thousand years of neglect and wilful destruction, and finally of the ravages of indiscriminating affection, have not availed to destroy. The city of Thebes has vanished because it was not built to endure. The ancient Egyptians laid no store by their dwelling-houses; they regarded life only as a halting-place on the journey to the next world, and their abode here was too transitory to be worth elaboration. They spent all their skill and ingenuity in constructing dwelling-places for their dead selves, where the Ka or " double " of their soul would agreeably pass his time in contemplation of the scenes of his past life which he would find depicted on the walls of the tomb. All the records we possess of the old Memphite empire are in tombs. The pyramids are tombs ; the pictures at Sakkarah are on the walls of the antechambers of tombs; the sculptures of Meydum are sepulchral monuments. Even of the second great period of Egyptian history, that represented mainly by the Twelfth Dynasty, our chief information is derived from the tombs of Beny Hasan. It is there that we see Egyptian society, as it was twenty-five centuries before Christ, depicted on the walls of a family burying-place. And at Thebes the same principle holds good. The monuments that survive are those that were built not for this life but for eternity. The palaces of Rameses have vanished, but the monuments he built for his soul's welfare bear testimony to his power and wealth in every degree of latitude from the Mediterranean to the second cataract. In a wall-picture we see the third Rameses caressing the chin of a favoured damsel, who supports the monarch's elbow with her hand to enable him to stroke her without fatigue ; but we see this, not in the palace where such blandishments would naturally take place, but in a side structure of the temple of Medinet Habu. The position is so unexpected that scholars have called this side structure the " Pavilion of Rameses;" but there is little doubt that it formed part of the temple, and that the picture of the king caressing a lady was only a phase ol the general representation of the kingly career which is the chief aim in Theban wall-decoration, after the relations of the sovereign with the gods have been fitly depicted. Most of the temples on the Libyan side of Thebes are merely developments of the entrance chambers of the tombs of the early empire. Just as the daily surroundings ol Ii |